Training

SNMP is a bit unfamiliar to many OpsMgr and Essentials administrators, so as promised, we’re going to deliver a series in which we unravel the SNMP functionality in both platforms, from basic concepts to advanced monitoring functionality. As Confucius said, “a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step”. So let’s start at the beginning.

In the first installment of our SNMP Series, we’ll begin unraveling the mystery around SNMP by answering the question What is SNMP?

The short answer is, The SNMP protocol is an industry standard protocol used by network management systems (NMS) to communicate with network elements.

NOTE: For purposes of our discussion, the NMS is Operations Manager or Essentials 2007, and the network elements are SNMP-enabled network devices we have targeted for monitoring by discovering them through the Discovery Wizard. There are some nuances to this statement, but we’ll split hairs later.

There are a few terms relating to SNMP monitoring that we’ll be hear repeatedly during the series, so let’s get these out of the way.

Important SNMP-related Terms

• SNMP TRAP is a message which is initiated by a network element and sent to the network management system. For example, a router could send a message if one of its redundant power supplies fails or a printer could send an SNMP trap when it is out of paper. Operations Manager or Essentials can be configured as an SNMP trap receiver to catch traps from discovered network devices. More on this in a future post.

• Variable Binding - Contents of an SNMP trap. The trap contains an SNMP Object Identifier and it’s value. This OID/value pair is called an SNMP variable binding, or simply varbind.

The NMS can read values (by issuing a GET) or change values (SET) on the agent

• SNMP GET is a message which is initiated by the network management system when it wants to retrieve some data from a network element. Operations Manager and Essentials can be configured to perform an SNMP GET to retrieve a value from a network device and make a determination of health based on the value retrieved, but that’s not all we can do with that data. You guessed it…more on this in a bit.

• SNMP SET is a message which is initiated by the NMS when it wants to change data on a network element. For example, the NMS may wish to alter a static route on a router.

• SNMP MIB, or Management Information Base, is a collection of variables which is shared between the NMS and the network element (NE). Think of a MIB as an address book of all of the object and attributes in an SNMP-enabled network device. The addresses in the MIB are called Object Identifiers, or OIDs. Operations Manager and Essentials do not use MIBs directly, but MIBs are very important, because they contain OIDs. These are essential in all flavors of SNMP monitoring in OpsMgr and Essentials.

• OBJECT IDENTIFIER (OID) - The OID defines the attribute of our device that we can GET or SET to retrieve a specific value. The MIB provides the name, OID, data type, read/write permissions and a brief description for each object in our network device. An OID is a list of numbers separated by periods. For example, the OID for the Name of a SNMP-enabled device is .1.3.6.1.2.1.1.5.0.

• COMMUNITY STRING The most basic form of SNMP security is the Community String. SNMP Community Strings are like passwords for network elements. Most often, there is one community string which is used for read-only access to a network element. The default value for this community string is often “public”. Using this community string like a password, the NMS can retrieve data from network elements. We need to know the READ community string in order to cover our SNMP-enabled network devices in Operations Manager and Essentials 2007.

With these basic concepts out of the way, we’re ready to start talking about SNMP in the context of Operations Manager and Essentials. In part 2, we’ll drill down on SNMP device discovery and availability monitoring in both Operations Manager and Essentials. I’ll stop here and we’ll pick up with that topic Part 2 of our series on Monday.

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Get System Center Operations Manager and Essentials 2007 training from the system center experts. We now offer classroom training for System Center Essentials 2007.

Sept 5th, 2008 - The Design and Planning session in the ACS Master Series (organized and sponsored by SecureVantage) that I delivered back in July is now available for download. We had some telephone connectivity issues during the original presentation, so we cleaned up the rough spots for the sake of continuity.

Thanks again to Jeremiah, the SecureVantage team and OpsMgr MVPs for working with and for the OpsMgr community to deliver such a broad array of ACS data free of charge. If you’re not familiar with the ACS Master Series, I encourage you to check out the session schedule, which runs weekly from July 10 to October 9, by clicking HERE. The series covers a broad range of topics from ACS concepts through advanced configuration and tuning.

Download the webcast at the URL below:

http://www.securevantage.com/docs/ACS%20Training/ACSMasterClassesSession2.zip

If you have customers interested in hands-on training on System Center Essentials 2007 in a classroom environment, I wanted to  let announce that we’ll be delivering training in several US cities in coming months. This is not MOC, but custom training authored and delivered by experienced Essentials 2007 administrators, such as myself.

• Course Description: See below
• Schedule: For a list of dates and cities, click HERE.
• Registration: To request more information, click HERE. 

System Center Essentials 2007 Administration and Configuration

Number of Days: Four (4)

Description: This four day course is a mix of in-depth instructor led training and hands-on labs that focuses on the core features and tasks in System Center Essentials 2007 to provide the Essentials 2007 administrator and consultant the information they require to successfully install, configure and manage Essentials 2007. Included throughout are tips, tricks and best practices based on the extensive field experience of the course authors and instructors.

This course will cover the following topics:

• Installing and Configuring Essentials
• Update Management
• Software Deployment
• Client Monitoring and Management
• Management Pack Configuration
• Creating Custom Management Packs
• Network and Non-Windows Monitoring
• Administration and Tuning Best Practices

The next meeting of the System Center Virtual Users Group is on the calendar, and we have some first rate speakers ready to share their knowledge. We’re touching on some topics surrounded by considerable interest in the System Center community.

Meeting and Registration Details

Date: Thursday, September 4th

Time: 7:00 p.m. Central Standard Time (1am GMT)

Agenda

• 7:00PM-7:10PM: Introduction (Pete Zerger)
• 7:10PM-7:40PM: Steve Rachui (Microsoft) - Targeting in Operations Manager 2007
• 7:40PM-8:10PM: Cameron Fuller (MVP - OpsMgr) - Community Extensions for Operations Manager and Essentials 2007
• 8:10PM-8:40PM: Pete Zerger (MVP - OpsMgr) - SNMP Device Monitoring in Operations Manager 2007
• 8.40PM-8:55PM: Q & A / Closing

Event Registration

To sign up for this event, register at the following URL:

https://www.clicktoattend.com/invitation.aspx?code=130906

Speaker Profiles

Steve Rachui (Microsoft) - Steve Rachui is a Manageability Support Escalation Engineer in the Product Support Services group at Microsoft. He has supported SMS since version 1.2. Steve can be reached via his supportability blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/steverac/.

Cameron Fuller (MVP) -Operations Manager MVP, is a Managing consultant for Catapult Systems, an IT consulting company and Microsoft Gold Certified Partner. Cameron is the co-author of Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 Unleashed and System Center Operations Manager 2007 Unleashed. Cameron can be reached via is blog at http://cameronfuller.spaces.live.com/.

Pete Zerger (MVP) -Pete Zerger is a consulting partner with AKOS Technology Services and has ten years of experience in the IT industry. He focuses on design and deployment of enterprise operations management, directory services, and messaging solutions. Pete holds an MCSE for Messaging, an MCTS for SQL Server 2005, and he is a Microsoft MVP for System Center Operations Manager. He is founder of System Center Forum, a popular community site covering Operations Manager 2007, Essentials 2007 and the System Center Suite.

Powershell MVP Marco Shaw has written an excellent article on the Command Shell in Operations Manager 2007.  Of particular interest are his review of agent deployment from the Command Shell in SP1, as well as the bulk installation of management packs from the Command Shell.

Read the full article at

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc671178.aspx

I’ll be in Portland, OR from June 3rd - 6th delivering the Operations Manager 2007 bootcamp.  The class is almost full, but there are a couple of seats left. I’d love to see some of my community friends join us for a deep dive into my favorite enterprise monitoring platform.

• For course syllabus, click HERE.
• For a list of dates and cities, click HERE.
• To request registration, click HERE.

I’ll be in Chicago from May 13th - 16th delivering the Operations Manager 2007 bootcamp.  The class is almost full, but there are a couple of seats left. I’d love to see some of my community friends join us for a deep dive into my favorite enterprise monitoring platform.

• For course syllabus, click HERE.
• For a list of dates and cities, click HERE.
• To request registration, click HERE.

See you at MMS 2008!

My copy of System Center Operations Manager 2007 Unleashed arrived to my secret location in Texas (after it spent some time at my home in Oklahoma). After the mail carrier wheeled it into the den (it is heavy), I had a look at the official page count - 1322, and that’s if you don’t count appendices!

I’ll publish some mini - reviews chapter-by-chapter as I can. No doubt this will be the authoritative reference for Opsmgr administrators everywhere. Congratulations to (my fellow MVPs) Kerrie, Cameron, John, Andy and the Unleashed team for a job well done!

If your an Essentials administrator reading this, remember Opsmgr and Essentials have the Monitoring, Authoring and to some degree Administration workspaces in common. I encourage you to pick up a copy as well.

Get your copy of unleashed on Amazon.com for less than $40! Page for page, that’s a pretty good deal indeed.

While the New York session the same week is full, there are still seats available in the Toronto Operations Manager 2007 Bootcamp. ..

Anyone enrolling for any 2007/2008 bootcamp session between now and December 31st at SystemCenterForum.org will receive a certificate for a free copy of Operations Manager 2007 Unleashed when it is published in Spring ‘08.

Request more information on this offer HERE.

Course Syllabus HERE.

Dates and Availability HERE.

A bundle of 5 self-paced mini-courses, each about 2 hours in duration, are now available on the Microsoft site. The courses can be purchased as a bundle under 3386. Strangely, no 5 day course is planned for the new, much more complex platform.

The bundle can be purchased from the following URL:

https://www.microsoftelearning.com/eLearning/offerDetail.aspx?offerPriceId=127702

This offer includes the following: